FAQs

Datashredders Frequently Asked Questions

How do I get rid of my confidential waste?The most secure way of getting rid of your confidential waste and ensuring your and your customers’ or clients’ personal information remains completely secure is by using a professional shredding company. You can shred items yourself, but this is time-consuming and much less secure than using professionals.

Which areas do you cover?Thanks to our membership of The Shredding Alliance, we can offer a fully nationwide shredding service.

Where can I have paper shredded by Datashredders? Where can I take documents to be shredded?No need to take anything anywhere – we operate a full mobile shredding service and will visit your premises.

How do I shred my documents?You could invest in an office shredder and feed in documents yourself, but if you’re a business that’s producing a lot of paperwork, that’s going to take up a lot of your valuable time.

Why should I outsource my shredding? I have plenty of staff to shred documents, even if I don’t have time myself.While it may seem more cost-effective to shred documents in-house, consider the cumulative amount of time it will take to shred hundreds of confidential documents using a tiny office shredder – time your staff could be spent performing more profitable tasks. Datashredders can have the same amount of shredding done in minutes.

Do I need to remove staples, paperclips etc. before my documents are shredded?No – our paper shredding machines are able to cope with staples, paperclips, binders and other similar items. All you need to do to prepare for our visit is collect your shredding in one place.

Can you provide us with containers to collect our shredding?Yes! We offer two kinds of secure waste containers. See our waste containers page for more information.

What happens to shredded paper?99% of our shredded paper is baled and recycled. The paper recycling process usually sees the paper mixed with water in a large vessel called a ‘pulper’, which separates the various fibres in the paper from each other and gives us – you guessed it – pulp, or slurry. It is then strained through screens, which remove residual glue, ink and other contaminants from the mixture, as well what’s left of non-paper shredding such as hard drives and data discs. The resultant mixture can then be made into new recycled paper, which, depending on the length of the fibres used in the paper (standard office A4 uses long fibres, whilst newspaper fibres are very short), can be recycled another 5-7 times!

How do you recycle a hard drive?The metals and plastics used to create a hard drive, and any other electronics that may have been shredded alongside paper are removed from the resultant slurry, and the raw materials are then resold to manufacturers.

What is ‘degaussing’ a hard drive?Degaussing is the process of removing data from hard drives by using a powerful magnetic field to disrupt the data pattern held on a hard drive to the point where the data cannot be reconstructed. The process is used by specialist computer recycling companies, who then sell on the blank, but intact, hard drive. Because our hard drive shredding process destroys a hard drive, reducing it to its base raw materials, there is no need for degaussing.

How can you guarantee the confidentiality of my sensitive data?Our staff are fully vetted and never directly handle your confidential documents – if your business uses our waste containers, these will slot directly into our mobile shredder, which feeds the contents in itself. If your business does not use our waste containers, we can provide secure woven polypropylene sacks.

I’ve only got a few documents – will you still shred them?Of course! We take on all sizes of shredding jobs.

What if I only need a one-off shredding visit?No problem – we’re just as happy to do one-off visits as we are to arrange regular appointments.

How frequently can you make return visits?As often as you need us.

Can I watch while you destroy my documents?Of course – and we’ll even issue you with a Certificate of Destruction once it’s done.

My sensitive data is stored electronically as well as on paper. Are you able to help?Absolutely. Our shredding machines can shred laptops, hard drives, data discs, flash drives and all kinds of other electronic storage methods with ease. Check out our Will It Shred? section for more information.

I’m interested in having Datashredders take care of my confidential waste. How do I get in touch for a quote?Getting in touch is easy. Just dial the number at the top of the page, fill in the form on our contact us page or send an email to info@datashredders.co.uk.